While You Were Sleeping
by Mark of the Asphodel
Summary: The Dark Lord is dead and the dust is settling around Belhalla when Patty makes a discovery in the catacombs that puts a knot into everyone's plans for the new era. Sometimes a "happy ending" isn't quite what you wanted it to be. Inspired by one of the "dream scenarios" for FE4.
1. Prologue and Awakening

**While You Were Sleeping**

I do not own _Fire Emblem_ or any of its characters.

* * *

_(Prologue)_

The lantern in Patty's hand didn't do much against the ink-black darkness of the catacombs beneath Belhalla. She could only see a few steps in front of her at a time as she descended the narrow spiraling staircase that dangled on metal ropes from the floor above; until she reached the bottom, Patty had no idea how far down the stairs went or if there even _was_ a bottom. But the final stair led her to a solid stone floor.

"Huh. It's dry down here. That's a good sign."

Patty went to work on her survey of catacombs, using the sound of her own voice to keep her company. She wasn't really scared of what might be down there- after going through the war with Sir Seliph, Patty reckoned she could take on anybody short of the Dark Lord himself... as long as there weren't too many anybodies coming at her at once, that is.

There turned out not to be much down there beneath the palace aside from a lot of old bones peeping out from niches on the wall- bones, and Lopt graffiti. Patty wondered if the dark sect had been living down there, right under the noses of the Grannvale kings. Patty'd been exploring for over an hour before she finally found something promising- a large blocky shape like a treasure chest, there on the floor in front of her. Light bounced off its polished surface and left Patty dazzled for a moment. The chest was made out of glass, she thought.

Patty rushed toward it and held her lantern to the glass, but what she found there wasn't diamonds and gold, or silver and turquoise either. Patty saw a white face and red hair, and the pale shape of a pair of folded hands.

_Dark Lord Julius_.

Patty let out a screech and leapt away, dropping her lantern in the process. The little ball of light cracked and went out, but Patty kept running. She felt things whack at her shins as she stumbled through the catacombs, but the sixth sense that always served her well for tomb-robbing got her safely to the staircase, and Patty scrambled back up into the respectable part of the palace- gooseflesh on her arms and her heart pounding in her ears.

Even so, she'd had a chance while she was running to think about her strange find, and she'd decided that it maybe wasn't the Dark Lord, dead or sleeping, after all. Something didn't add up about the details she did remember.

"Shanan! SHANAN!"

She wanted to find Shanan, but Patty was happy to grab the arm of the first adult she tumbled into, which happened to be Sir Finn. He'd been coming down the hall from the opposite way, his son Delmud right on his heels. Patty flung herself at Finn and shouted loud enough to obliterate whatever it was Delmud was saying.

"There's dead bodies in the basement!"

It said a lot about what they'd all been up to for the last year that this announcement didn't startle Finn in the least. He only looked down at her, waiting for the rest of the story. As for Delmud, he seemed honestly kind of relieved that she'd come barreling into the middle of their conversation.

"Well, it's really one dead body," Patty amended. "In some kinda glass coffin. But maybe there's more?"

"A glass coffin?" Finn repeated. He and Delmud exchanged what might be called a Significant Look.

"I'll get some torches," said Delmud, before he was asked.

-x-

Patty didn't have any problem leading her helpers back to the place in the catacombs where the "treasure" was located. The torchlight didn't show much more than Patty's lantern had; the catacomb was all old bones, cobwebs, and scribbled hymns to the Dark God. The glass coffin turned out to be in a little circular dead-end on one of the corridors, and the walls there were simply _covered_ in Lopt graffiti. Almost like someone had wanted to make that room an extra-special holy place. Patty felt the gooseflesh rise on her arms again.

Delmud held his torch aloft, and Patty downright shivered as the flickering light illuminated the pale face of the dead man. He was young, she thought- younger than Shanan for sure, and cute in a kind of girly way. His hair was every bit as red as the Dark Lord's but wasn't as long, and he didn't have a holy mark on his forehead

"So that's what happened to you," she heard Finn mutter.

"Huh? You know this guy?"

"That's Lord Azel. He was the younger brother of Emperor Arvis."

"Really?" A prince locked away in a crystal coffin hidden deep within the palace? Patty wondered if there'd been any gold or jewels buried with him. But the name sounded _awfully _familiar. "Wait a minute. Doesn't that make him-"

But Finn was already telling Delmud to go find Lewyn, and the grouchy bard coming onto the scene meant that, if cute Lord Azel had jewels on him, Patty wasn't going to be getting a share of them.

"I don't s'pose there'd be a reward in finding him? He'd be awfully important to somebody, right?"

Her voice seemed very small and echoey in the black caverns beneath the palace, and neither father nor son paid her fancies any mind.

_(Awakening)_

"Hey, Azel. You still in there?"

He thought he recognized the voice. The words filtered down through the soft gray place where Azel found himself, and Azel for his part was floating up towards a slit of light. The light broke around him, like sunbeams made solid or a flood of warm water. Azel stared up into coldly beautiful features softened by a cascade of unruly green hair.

"Lewyn?"

"That's right." Something flat and cold in his voice let on that Lewyn wasn't what he once had been, but Azel figured that went for all of them.

_All of them._

"But what are you-"

"Easy now." Fingers lightly pressed against his chest pinned him back to the bed with deceptively firm pressure. "It's been a while, Azel. You slept off the hangover we all got from Sigurd's war."

"Uh..."

_Lewyn's supposed to be in Silesse_, Azel thought as frantic sentences arranged themselves in his head. _I was in Silesse, but then I left Tiltyu and went to Belhalla. Is this Silesse now? Did Lewyn rescue me from..._

_From Manfroy_. Azel shuddered at the memory of dark magic closing around him like a winding-sheet.

"You may as well let him see, Lewyn."

Azel thought he recognized that voice, too. He squinted at the two men who stood against the opposite wall- one tall and lithe, with black hair spilling halfway down his back, the other less tall but broader across the shoulders, with a fierce mustache that matched his mane of brown hair. They seemed vaguely familiar.

"Do you remember us, Azel?" said the taller of the pair. "We've grown up a bit since we parted ways in Lubeck."

"Lubeck?" _Who'd left their company in Lubeck?_ Then the image of two gawky adolescent boys popped into his head. "Shanan? And... Oifaye? How is this even possible?"

They couldn't be any older than twenty. At least, the Shanan and Oifaye that Azel knew couldn't be more than twenty, but these two men facing him now were close to thirty. Or past it. Was this some kind of trick, another of Manfroy's diabolical machinations?

Lewyn's cool voice snapped that chain of thoughts.

"Azel, what year is it?"

"763." He said it without a moment's hesitation, because 763 was Tinny's year the way that 761 was Arthur's.

"Yeah. Like I said, you've been out for a while."

"So what year... what year is it?"

"778."

Azel whipped his head to follow the sound of yet another oddly familiar voice- clear and even and yet strangely flat, the same way Lewyn sounded flat.

"Oh, hey, Finn. So you're here, too..."

Finn was standing in the glare of the window, and for a moment Azel thought that the knight from Leonster looked exactly as he had when they'd last seen another in Silesse. But as Finn shifted position to give Azel his due as a Lord of House Velthomer (and when was the last time anyone had done _that_?), Azel noticed shadowed eyes and a general air of _hard times_ that recalled what Lewyn had said about the aftermath of the war being a giant hangover.

"Yeah, Azel,"Lewyn was saying. "We've assembled a little party for you."

Azel took a second look at Lewyn now that his grasp on the entire situation had tilted. The heir to Forseti's power still did have the luminous beauty that Azel remembered- flawless as a sculpture of marble or ice- but on closer inspection Azel noticed the hard eyes and grim mouth of a man closing in on forty.

Azel wondered what _he_ looked like now, but no one offered him a mirror; when he glanced down at his hands they looked the same as they ever had. His voice, too, didn't seem any different than it had the last time that he remembered speaking...

Fifteen years before.

"Why are you here? And where is this?"

"We're here- and this is Belhalla, by the way- on business. Mostly finished business," said Lewyn, and Azel didn't entirely like the implications of _mostly_. "There's been some changes around here of late."

"Belhalla? Is Arvis..."

"He's not here anymore," said Lewyn, before Azel could even finish asking.

"So Arvis is gone. And we're here... I'm here." Arvis being gone- _dead_- wasn't even a real thing to him yet. "Is there anyone else?"

"Aideen's still with us," Oifaye volunteered from his spot against the wall. "She's done with making war and stayed behind in Isaach when we moved south, but she's doing well."

It was kind of him to remember that Azel might be concerned about Aideen, but giving good news of her was like offering Azel a sop instead of the round of bread that he actually wanted.

"How's Tiltyu?" he asked, since no one was going to tell him if he didn't.

"Things didn't work out so good for her," Lewyn replied. "Sorry, Azel."

He didn't sound as though he meant it. Azel stared into Lewyn's impassive face as he forged ahead with his questions.

"And I'm guessing things didn't work out so well for the kids, either..."

To his surprise, Lewyn seemed to soften a little.

"Well, about that, actually..."

"We thought it might be best if you got accustomed to us- as we are now," said Oifaye, "before we showed you anything more."

"More..."

"Yeah," Shanan put in, and the crooked smile that flicked across his face belonged to the child from Azel's own time. "There's a whole lot more outside this room that you never even imagined."

"Are you ready?" Lewyn asked him, and finally withdrew his hand so that Azel could fully sit up. Azel looked around the sparsely furnished room- servants' quarters, he thought- and the faces of the four men that he knew and yet didn't know.

"Does it matter if I am?" No one answered him. Azel didn't expect they would.

* * *

Author's Notes: A word of explanation on this scenario. Among the extensive "designers' notes" and "dream scenarios" that Shouzou Kaga and others made for FE4 were some pretty cracked out ideas. One of them involved Azel leaving Tiltyu in Silesse with the kids while he went to confront Alvis over Arvis's various, er, policies. Manfroy felt the sibling reunion would be bad news for his grand plans (because Arvis still loved Azel too much not to be swayed by him) and zapped Azel into a magic sleep as soon as Azel reached Belhalla. Azel was then stashed in the basement beneath the palace (no, really) until he was discovered after Seliph and Friends defeated Julius. This is not "what really happened" (Kaga was clear on this point- it's more like creator's headcanon from very early on in the development process. And no, Sleeping Beauty Azel is not the weirdest thing in those notes, not by a long shot.

Anyway, the idea is too ridiculous not to play with, even if I am not following the strict outline of that particular dream scenario because eh, parts of it just don't work for me and they don't mesh sufficiently with the final game canon we have in FE4.


	2. Meeting

**While You Were Sleeping**

I do not own _Fire Emblem_ or any of its characters.

* * *

(_Meeting_)

He wasn't ready.

Oifaye had given him the rundown before Azel was thrust back into the world, told him of how they- the others- had managed to find all of the children, even the ones who were supposedly lost forever. That was all the preparation Azel received before facing _them_.

Azel wasn't ready to deal with Prince Seliph and Princess Julia, who each managed to look shockingly like Lady Deirdre in completely different ways. He tried to relate the tall, courteous young man who now laid claim to all Grannvale with the toddler he'd given hobby-horse rides to and just couldn't. It made something ache between his eyes to even try.

He wasn't ready for the young man with the lion's mane of golden hair who looked _exactly_ like King Eldigan... but wasn't. He wasn't ready for Prince Leif of Leonster, who looked identical to his father Quan from the back... and then turned to face Azel with his mother Ethlyn's eyes. And he really wasn't ready for the sight of little Lady Lana, a girl on the edge of womanhood who brought back memories of Aideen that made Azel a little heartsick.

_This is the daughter that I... we... might've had, if everything had gone right_.

The thought passed through his mind without warning and before he could lock it down and shut it away. That was the point where the whole mad kaleidoscope of names and faces and voices that didn't make sense to his head _or_ his heart became much too much and Azel had to sit down, to find a place at the table far away from these splendid young creatures who looked either too much or not enough like his long-dead companions. And then _they_ sat down opposite him.

_Tiltyu's eyes_, he thought. Arthur had Tiltyu's eyes. Strange how many of these young men took after their mothers.

Right now Tiltyu's eyes were looking across the table at him with an expression of cool appraisal, something as foreign to Tiltyu as, well, any number of things Azel couldn't tot up right then. Tiltyu had never looked at him or at anybody else like that, not that Azel ever saw. When Azel couldn't stand the eye contact with his son, he glanced over at Tinny, who sat with both her hands clutched together beneath her chin, a little silver squirrel grasping an invisible nut.

She didn't look like she hated him. Her first response to him had been only, "They told me you were dead."

"Ah..." Azel said now. What did he have to say to them, really, after fifteen years? The embarrassing silence reigned over the table, and when Azel couldn't take Tinny's stare any more either, he said, "Look, don't worry about me. Just... talk like I'm not here."

Arthur made a little noise, and Tinny frowned, but even so they didn't say a word. Then the young man with the mop of green hair who could _only_ be Lewyn's son showed up to save them; Azel watched as both of his children slipped away laughing to be with their friend.

"This is a nightmare," Azel muttered to himself. He could feel perspiration trickling down the back of his neck. "Why on earth am I even here?"

"May I sit with you, Uncle?"

Azel's nerves were ragged enough that even this clear and melodious voice made him jump a little in his seat.

"Ah... sure."

She even sounded like Deirdre. Not exactly, but enough to be... disconcerting. Azel watched the Imperial Princess as she slipped into the seat beside him. This was the girl who'd inherited the full power of the god Naga and used it against her own twin; he could almost feel that power coming off of her, like the dazzle of the full moon upon snow... the way Azel had once thought he'd seen a corona of sacred fire around his brother.

"Do you need anything, Uncle? I'm sure this is all very strange to you."

Azel had to forcibly remind himself that this pale, lovely girl was his brother's child. Arvis and Deirdre together had made this ethereal yet powerful creature with hair like mist at dawn. _Very strange_ didn't begin to cover it, really.

"I'm sure it'll take a while, but I'll get used to it," he said, and made himself smile at Julia.

She nodded, and something in her eyes showed an understanding of what he was going through. Azel wondered what Julia in her own short life had gone through; neither Oifaye nor Lewyn had told him much, but under the circumstances it couldn't possibly be good.

"Father spoke of you sometimes when I was a small child," she said now. "He cared for you very much, I know... he regretted it deeply that he never was able to see you again."

"Did he?" And Azel felt that involuntary tug in the direction of _Lord Brother_, as inexorable as a sunflower turning toward its sun, until the colder part of his being responded with a snap: _then maybe Lord Brother shouldn't have ambushed and killed my friends and sent me running for Silesse_.

"To think you were down there the entire time, and none of us had any idea," she was saying now, and the sorrow in her voice roused Azel to pity- for himself, for Arvis, for every missing day they might have shared as _family_ in some other life. But something in Azel had iced over long before he'd fallen into that black sleep of Manfroy's creation, maybe as far back as the _first_ time he'd been forced into Silessian exile. If Arvis hadn't done some terrible things and allied himself with truly terrible people, Azel wouldn't have spent fifteen years in the catacombs. And Princess Julia wouldn't have been compelled to obliterate her brother Julius. And...

And Azel wouldn't have two children who were perfect strangers to him now. He looked their way every now and again as he and Julia spoke of pleasantly inconsequential things; they seemed to be enjoying themselves. Tinny did look horribly like Tiltyu, especially when she turned so he could only see her face in profile, see the small nose and chin and the curve of her cheek as she turned her head. Arthur was all angles, and for a moment Azel was reminded of Arvis.

He wondered how long it would take to sink in that he'd never see Arvis or Tiltyu again. Part of him kept thinking of Tiltyu up there in Silesse, waiting...

Princess Julia was a sweet and compassionate girl, and Azel supposed she was being a good hostess, but when Prince Seliph (or was it Emperor Seliph now?) came to see how his sister was faring, Azel decided to excuse himself for the night. He was beyond tired, and supposed that he needed to sleep... though the idea of needing _more_ sleep was funny in its own way. Maybe he just needed to be alone.

On his way back to his sleeping quarters- new and better rooms, suitable for a relation of the Imperial Princess- Azel caught a glimpse of some other people who'd slipped away from the party. They'd gone out onto a balcony, but Azel could see them plainly through an arched doorway as Shanan, his long black hair shimmering in the torchlight, bent over the girl with the golden braid who'd discovered Azel in the catacombs that morning. He could hear Shanan's new deep voice murmuring something in Patty's ear, and he heard Patty giggle in return.

_Shanan's older than me, now. But he's _young_, and he's got that girl, and they look happy..._

Azel didn't know what he was right then- old or young, alive or just pretending to be. He did know, or thought he knew, that he wasn't happy. And he didn't see much of a reason right then that he ought to be.

**To Be Continued...**

* * *

A/N: No, we are not going to be shipping Azel/Julia. Just so you know.


	3. Remembering

**While You Were Sleeping**

I do not own _Fire Emblem_ or any of its characters.

* * *

_(Remembering)_

It turned out Azel's body did want to simply rest; the unnatural sleep of the last fifteen years hadn't left him very refreshed. Maybe the better term for it was petrified, or frozen like the bodies that turned up in Silessian glaciers during the summer melt. Sometimes the bodies looked freshly dead even when their clothes, their weapons, made it clear they'd been lying in the ice for centuries...

Yes. That was what he was. An ice-man, unthawed, wearing the face and clothes that belonged to his own era even though the world had been spinning away through light and darkness as he slept. And he did look the same; Azel had stared into the gilded mirror on his wall for a few bleary-eyed moments before throwing himself in disgust onto the bed.

"Why am I even here?" he asked again before closing his eyes and wishing himself to sleep. That sleep came on gently, like an unfolding embrace instead of a dark veil dropping down to smother him. Azel was warm, and time seemed to be passing along in its course, and he even dreamed. In the still dark before morning he woke with a start, and the dreams escaped leaving only one thought behind.

Tiltyu was dead.

He still didn't believe it. He'd just left her there, hadn't he? In Azel's yesterday she was hidden away in their cabin with Arthur and the baby. Every detail of her was fresh and sharp to him- the scent of her hair, the taste of her tears, the sound of her laugh and the touch of her fingers running down his shoulders. Tiltyu was real and alive and _there_, if he could only turn around and get back to her.

After that, he couldn't sleep at all, not when his mind echoed with _Tiltyu's dead_ while his body and heart and soul insisted that she wasn't. Azel dragged himself from the bed when gray morning light trickled in through the curtain and he steeled himself to face the world where his yesterday was everybody else's distant memory.

He took his time about facing it, though. First Azel called for a bath on the excuse that he hadn't had one in a very long time. Then he decided to have breakfast brought to his room. Then he slipped out the back stairs to spend a while staring into the wet remains of a garden courtyard. Some of the plants were still alive, but strange scorch-marks on the paving stones indicated that something unpleasant must have taken place there in recent times. Torture? Executions? Azel stared at the trampled plants until the low clouds drifting across the battlements of Belhalla began to drizzle down a warm rain; mindful of his tendency to get chills, Azel decided he was better off inside.

Of course, the first person he encountered there was Tinny.

"Oh!" she said, and again she reminded him of a little squirrel, with her furtive darting movements.

"Good morning, Tinny."

"I was hoping to see you," she said. "I was wondering if we might talk..."

_And I was afraid of exactly that_, Azel thought, but since there was no running away now he walked with her to a place he remembered from his childhood, a gallery where he would wait by himself while Arvis consulted behind closed doors with King Azmur. It had changed little; the dark wood carvings and gilded rosettes on the ceiling had come through the wars somehow, and only one of the stained-glass windows was smashed out and boarded over. The smell of it had changed though; instead of polished wood and incense, there was something stale, something rancid about the air in that gallery.

They sat down on a high bench beneath one of the windows, and Tinny's feet didn't reach the floor, just as Azel's feet hadn't reached the floor when he'd sat on that bench, waiting for Arvis and kicking the air. She was smaller than Tiltyu, Azel thought, and he wondered if, at fifteen, Tinny still had some growing to do. That was the moment where it struck him that this girl with two beribboned plaits of hair was actually his daughter, was the very same being that he'd cradled only weeks ago- her little head as fragile as an eggshell in his hands, tiny nails glinting on the little pink stars of her hands.

He'd always heard that children grew up in the blink of an eye. Azel had to stifle a laugh, and quite honestly he felt he was on the verge of being sick.

Tinny watched him with her pale eyes- more of a light bluish-gray than the storm-cloud violet that Arthur had inherited from their mother.

"Tell me about mum when she was younger."

"I knew your mum from the time I was very small," Azel began, and for a moment it was young Tiltyu sitting next to him on the bench, both of them waiting in boredom while the important members of their families discussed grand things with the king. "She and Lex- he was Johalva's uncle- and I were all friends together, though our lives were very different at home. I was raised by my brother Arvis, as you've probably heard, and Lex didn't get on with his father at all. But your grandfather Reptor... he wasn't a good man, but he did love Tiltyu."

_Loved her so much he didn't believe for one moment she'd joined with Sigurd of her own accord. _

"He spoiled her a little. Your mum got out of lessons if she didn't want to take them, she always had nice things..."

Azel stopped himself there. This wasn't something Tinny would want to hear about her mother from _her own father_. This was a litany of the grievances that House Velthomer's bastard son felt when he measured himself against the precious daughter of House Freege, the little spark of light who could make the sour old prime minister soften with pride.

"Your mum was pretty sheltered," he said. "She was always cheerful, always smiling, but when things started to go wrong it was harder on her than on the rest of us, I think."

He didn't want to say more than that, because now all the other memories that were still too fresh and raw were coming at him. Tiltyu in Silesse the first time, her bright smile turned as brittle as an icicle. Tiltyu after her father's defeat, too plagued by melancholy to get out of her bed, able to smile at Arthur but not strong enough to hold him. Tiltyu not two months before, weeping as Azel left the cabin because she knew she wasn't likely to ever see him again.

"Tinny... I'm sorry but I can't do this right now."

She said she understood, and maybe she did. But he thought that she cringed, pulling into herself, as he leapt down from the bench and walked as fast as he could without actually _running_ from the stale oppressive air of that ancient gallery and all of its ghosts.

-x-

Azel locked himself in his room after that. It was childish and stupid and completely beneath him, but right then Azel didn't give a damn. He stayed there, face down in the bed with a pillow over his head to block out all every bit of light and noise, until a presence at the end of the bed told him that they'd broken the lock or battered down the door.

"Come on, Azel. There's a time and place for falling apart and this isn't it."

"Shut up, Lewyn."

Lewyn didn't shut up. He'd brought in a flute, and he began to play it now, in a piercing discordant way that rattled Azel's nerves instead of soothing them. All the pillows on the bed couldn't shut out the awfulness of that music.

"Please stop."

"Would you rather I sang? I can sing to you the fall of Silesse, of the bloody occupation of Isaach, of the ups and downs of the Thracian Liberation Front. I'm partial to the saga of Silesse, but there are some parts of it you might not be able to stomach."

"I get it," Azel said as he sat up. "I had it easy."

"You don't know the half of it. Sylvia's out wandering the the world as a penitent- where, even I don't know. Raquesis has been sitting in the dungeons of Silvail for the last seven years. Briggid drowned in the River Thracia; the power of Ulir brought her back to life but all her memories are gone. She wouldn't believe who she really is if you stuffed the Yewfelle into her hands and told her to fire it."

"That part doesn't sound so bad. I can do without some of these memories," Azel said, but Lewyn looked at him then with an expression so fierce, so cold, that Azel had to avert his eyes and mumble out an apology.

In that moment, Azel was too afraid of Lewyn to even think about asking how and why Lewyn knew any of these things. As with Arvis, so many (_so many!_) years before, it was best to accept that those who bore the mark of the gods were just different. Azel needed to put on his shoes, brush down his hair, and go back out there like a responsible adult.

"Claude was blinded and crippled," he heard Lewyn over his shoulder. "His disciples had to carry him around in a chair until he died a few years ago. And Ayra..."

This time, Azel really did run. He'd learn everything in due time, whether he wanted to or not.

**To Be Continued...**

* * *

Author's notes: both the idea that Tiltyu's father doted on her and the fates of Sylvia, Raquesis, and Claude in this story are all taken, like the basic idea of this plot, from the designers' notes. Again, I am using those as a jumping-off point rather than following them to the letter.


	4. Retreating

**While You Were Sleeping**

I do not own _Fire Emblem_ or any of its characters.

Obligatory Health Advisory: This chapter includes grown-ups using _substances_ as grown-ups of many nationalities often do.

* * *

_(Retreating)_

Azel went to find Tinny to make amends for bolting on her that morning. Beyond his door it seemed that everyone else was celebrating in a party as merry as the one the night before- Azel heard raucous music in several different styles as he searched for Tinny's room. Sounds came at Azel from strange angles as he searched down corridors that had changed in the past twenty years; he encountered dead-ends and branching hallways that were foreign to him, and Azel felt his heart beat ever faster as he grew flustered in his search.

"Uncle?"

"Ah... Julia?" He whipped around to see the princess standing several paces behind him. Her pale hair and robes made her look as serene as a saint's ivory statue in a church.

"Is everything all right?"

"I was wondering where Tinny might be."

"Oh, Tinny. She's gone to her room for the night, but I think she'd like to see you. She's on the second floor, just past the Dragon Fountain."

Azel had a fair idea of where the fountain was, so he thanked Julia and went up the nearest staircase. It didn't entirely surprise him that the Lopt sect had vandalized the fountain, blackening its white marble and staining the waters crimson so that a dark dragon romped in pool of blood. A gesture worthy of a petulant child, Azel thought, and he wondered if his dead nephew Julius had personally done the act or if the Lopt mages had done it for him.

Thinking on the statue worked to distract Azel from the meeting with Tinny right until his knuckles touched her door. She came to the door quickly enough, but her reaction on seeing Azel proved all too telling.

"Eep!"

If Tinny had inherited any measure of Tiltyu's spunk, it was long gone. One way or another, it was probably his own fault. Azel jammed his foot into the doorway in case she was tempted to close it on him.

"I'm sorry for leaving you abruptly today, Tinny," he said. "It was the first time I'd tried to talk about your mother since... well, since _this_, and it just wasn't easy for me."

He could see one of her eyes through the opening, and the expression in that eye softened. Tinny opened the door the rest of the way so they could face each other.

"It's all right, Father." He didn't hear any telltale hesitation in her voice.

"Um... we can talk now? Maybe?"

"We don't have to tonight," she said. "I think we'll have plenty of time now, right?"

Azel wasn't sure if she was being kind to him or rejecting him, and he decided to pretend it was the former.

"Right. We'll have lots of time," he said. His forced smile might have even been convincing, because she smiled back at him. It was a very sweet smile, more like what Azel remembered of Tiltyu's little sister Ethnia.

"Good night, Father."

"Good night, Tinny."

Azel stared into the wood-grain pattern in the door for several moments after she shut it on him. Concentrating on that helped him to keep his mind off his little baby girl who didn't exist anymore.

-x-

Azel came back downstairs in a fog. He didn't like the merry music any better than he had on his first circuit of the halls. A lot of it sounded Isaachian, he thought, and he never had enjoyed what passed for music there. He remembered calling Lex tin-eared over it once, after Lex fell over himself praising something just to please Ayra. Not that it had helped Lex in his pursuit of Ayra any, not with Holyn around...

Azel stopped himself. All of that seemed so real, so close, even though he hadn't seen them in years in his own time and they'd all been dead far longer than a couple of years...

"How stupid of me," he mumbled, and began to blink rapidly to keep tears from welling up. In this state, he nearly collided with someone in the hall; Azel looked up to find Oifaye regarding him with either sympathy or pity. Azel always did have a bit of trouble telling which of those was which.

"Come on, it's a little quieter in here," said Oifaye, and he led Azel toward a room that had, long ago, been a sacrosanct place for adults.

Azel needed no prodding to accept this invitation into the smoking room. A little quiet sounded exactly what he needed in that moment, and being alone with his own thoughts was just what he didn't need. The smoking room, even in decay, matched the rumors he'd heard back when Alvis was Captain of the Royal Guard- arched doorways and inlaid walls, barbaric designs made acceptable through the hands of Grannvale artisans. Shanan was already there, seated cross-legged on the floor with a blown-glass water pipe in front of him.

"We've been trying not to expose the children to our own bad habits," said Oifaye as he gestured to the water pipe.

"That's beautiful." Azel stared at the undulating shape and luminous color of the glass. "Where did you find something so nice?"

"The previous occupants left it behind," said Oifaye. "Loptyrian mages turn out to have a great range of vices."

"At least this vice is preferable to goat mutilation," Shanan put in as he took his lips from the pipe for a moment. "We won't mention the crop designs, though."

"What?" Azel already felt lost.

"There's a long-standing argument within our party," Oifaye said as he gave Shanan the eye, "over whether or not Loptyr's adherents taint crops by pressing arcane designs into the fields."

"Of course it's Lopts. Who else would do it? They cut a path through the fields with their foul spells and then you have to burn the whole field to cleanse it."

"Whereas others claim that it's something any bored villager can do with some rope and a wooden plank and that there's nothing wrong with the crops from a 'tainted' field."

"Just because Finn said they caught a couple of idiots trampling an oat field in Thracia doesn't mean the rest of them _aren't_ made by Lopts," Shanan said as he waved off Oifaye's argument.

"This would be a mere difference of opinion if the future King of Isaach didn't endorse burning fields as a solution to this facet of the Loptyrian problem and some key allies didn't have strong objections to this policy," Oifaye concluded.

Azel watched this back-and-forth, unsure whether he ought to laugh or not. Not only was the problem _not_ really a joke, he couldn't watch the pair of them without seeing the two little boys they'd been superimposed on the scene. Shanan with his ragged hair pulling faces as Oifaye tried to explain something of grave importance, Oifaye turning pink in the face when Shanan didn't respond to a well-reasoned argument...

Well. At least they were alive... though Shanan, under the influence of his water pipe, was soon with them only in body. Azel wanted to join him in the place where pipe-smokers went to be happy, but there was only one pipe and Azel didn't feel comfortable asking. Oifaye didn't have any such compunction; he took the pipe from Shanan with an ease that said they'd been through this a thousand times and took a place on the one settee that looked like it could still hold the weight of a grown man.

"Take a seat, Azel. We threw out the cushions that had rats' nests in them."

Azel sat down on a pile of brocaded cushions that were only a little tattered and stained.

"I can't believe this place is such a ruin. You'd think even a Dark Lord would want his capital to be grand."

"You'd think a Dark Lord would want his subjects alive to serve him, but He seems to have had concerns that were... not of this world. And His servants ranged from holy men gone wrong to common criminals," said Oifaye as he passed the pipe to Azel.

Azel took a tentative sample of the pipe in case it made him cough, but the smoke proved sweet and smooth and he didn't even feel a tickle in his throat from it. He drew in a deeper breath and settled back against the cushions.

"I guess I'll just never understand," he said. Oifaye shrugged and they passed the pipe back and forth for a time, just relaxing while muffled sounds of the party trickled in through the inlaid walls.

Oifaye seemed the most, well, _normal_ of the people Azel had once known. Lewyn was... Lewyn. Shanan had changed so much from the kid that Sir Sigurd had rescued in Verdane that he might as well have been a different person, plus he had that _something_ about him that went with having major holy blood and it made Azel uncomfortable. Also, Azel couldn't get the image of Shanan kissing Patty out of his head and that made him uncomfortable too. And with Finn things were uncomfortable in the opposite direction; a holy-blooded Velthomer was too high above Finn's station for them to ever be friends when they were younger, and that hadn't changed in the last fifteen years.

Azel also had the unshakable feeling that Finn resented him for being alive and unscathed when other people from Sigurd's army weren't. It wasn't anything that Finn had said in the few words they'd exchanged since Azel woke... it was just a _sense_ Azel got. But Oifaye was perfectly cordial and there was just enough of the boy-tactician left in him that it put Azel at ease.

"I suppose I ought to apologize on behalf of, well, _everyone_ for bringing you here and not doing anything to make the change easier on you," Oifaye said now. "But in our defense, it's been like that for a year and more. 'Here's the sister you never knew about,' and 'By the way, your entire existence is founded on a terrible lie.' Things like that."

"Ah."

"And I think that, for those of us who ought to have been responsible, it was easy to brush some things aside and say, 'Well, _we_ went through all these terrible events without breaking, and so can they,' and to just get on with our mission."

"Some did break." It was Tiltyu who popped into his head again, but Azel knew it hadn't _only_ been Tiltyu.

"I know." Oifaye took another puff off the water pipe. "Shanan and I have always counted ourselves lucky. We had one another to rely on, and Aideen supported the both of us. It was never _easy_, but I don't think we ever had the sense that what was given to us to bear was more than we could handle."

Azel was feeling very calm and a little sleepy now. It was far from blissful peace but he'd gladly take it.

"My mum used to sing a song to me... about how the wind god gentles his winds for the little shorn lambs, so they don't feel the cold."

"I've heard that song," Oifaye said as he passed the pipe back to Azel. "It doesn't always work that way."

"No. I guess not." Azel didn't feel like breathing in any more smoke; he set the pipe down on the floor in front of him and stared at the colored swirls in the glass, the gold filigree decorations on the bowl.

"There were a lot of little lambs in Isaach and everywhere else who didn't have the winds gentled for them, and if what they suffered was a _better_ fate, I don't even want to think about it." Oifaye sighed then, and his tone shifted from stern to reflective. "I guess it's all a matter of perspective. You've heard about what happened to Father Claude?"

"Yeah, Lewyn told me." The ceiling was beautiful too, Azel thought, and he wondered how many years of work had gone into this single room in the vast palace.

"He might have said that his own fate wasn't a burden too heavy to bear. That may be the difference between a saint and the rest of us."

"Yeah." After a long pause, Azel added, "I think I need to go now."

He really didn't want to fall asleep there on the floor the way Shanan seemed to have gone into a trance. He pushed himself up from the cushions; Oifaye rose as well and he walked Azel to the door.

"There're better days ahead," Oifaye said, and he patted Azel on the arm as Azel turned to leave.

Something about that didn't sit well with Azel, and only several minutes later, as Azel passed by a defaced mural of Saint Heim's exploits, did the reason for that discomfort hit him.

"He was reassuring me like I was one of the kids," Azel to himself, and despite the entire "men only" context of their conversation, that's exactly what it'd felt like. "I'm one of the kids now."

From his place below the mural, Azel had a view of three long corridors converging into one. Three figures were approaching him from the right, and in Azel's disoriented state he briefly took them for Sir Sigurd, Prince Quan, and King Eldigan, all of them young and unbowed and come to join the party. Only as they drew close to pass him did Azel realize they were the three princes of this new age- Seliph, Leif, and Ares.

They didn't seem to notice him, anymore than they'd notice a servant. Not that there was any reason they ought to, Azel thought. No reason at all.

**To Be Continued...**

* * *

So Azel's attempt to bond with Tinny isn't going so hot. Keep in mind this has really only been the second "day" of Azel's new life, though. We get to see more of Arthur next chapter.


	5. Confessing

**While You Were Sleeping**

I do not own _Fire Emblem_ or any of its characters.

* * *

_(Confessing)_

The next day, when Azel tried to speak with Tinny, she let him in.

"This is a pretty room," he said upon entering her sanctuary of silk taffeta in soothing tints of dove-gray and lilac. "It suits you, Tinny."

And he caught himself, because what right did he have to say such a thing? He didn't know her.

But perhaps Azel knew her better than he thought, because Tinny said in reply, "These were my rooms before. I got to stay here when Blume and Hilda brought me to court. Ishtar's rooms are right through that doorway."

Azel looked at the closed door in the bedroom wall and tried to place the name "Ishtar," which took a few moments. Then he remembered her- Blume's daughter, now dead. He thought he recalled something about her being involved with Prince Julius.

"Would you like to have any tea, Father?"

Azel thought he heard a slight tremor, the briefest possible hesitation, in her voice just then, but he accepted the offer. And so there was tea, and biscuits with cream, and more tea, and after that Azel found himself sitting on the silken counterpane of his daughter's bed, chatting to her as he might have chatted to a female playfellow in the days when he was too young to even think of marriage. As he might have chatted to Tiltyu.

Then again, Tiltyu never would have talked over two decades' worth of warfare and politics with him.

"Anyway, so then Arvis institutes this thing called the involvement clause."

"Oh, I know about that," she said. "Uncle Blume used it to deal with the rebel sympathizers in Thracia."

"Um... that'd be Prince Leif's supporters, right?"

"A lot of them were," Tinny admitted.

"Okay. So I don't have to explain how bad the involvement clause was. Well, after it went into effect, nobody who'd been willing to help us before wanted anything to do with us. I can't blame them- it'd be their own lives and those of everyone they cared about at stake. At that point, your mum and I really didn't have anything else..."

He felt his chest getting tight.

"So I decided to appeal to the emperor personally. I kind of talked myself into the idea that I could make Arvis see sense about what he was doing to the people. Tiltyu didn't believe me, but she let me go... like I said, we were pretty much out of luck by that point. So I left... and yeah, it didn't work so well."

He stared at a random point on the opposite wall for some time after that.

"Were you and mum sweethearts before the war?"

"No, we weren't." He couldn't lie about it, and there was no point in lying anyway, not when Oifaye and Lewyn and the rest might've already told her, or could tell her at any given moment. "When I was a kid, I saw Lady Aideen of Jungby and I fell for her. For ten years, I couldn't think about anyone else. Your mum was my friend through that whole time, but..."

Azel shook his head and looked down at his feet. He was sitting now on the bed with his knees drawn up, and he realized too late that his boots were on the counterpane.

"Oh, sorry. Should I take my boots off?"

"Don't worry about it," she said, and he thought there was a hint of a giggle in her voice then.

"All right, Tinny. Anyway, when Lady Aideen got kidnapped by some thugs from Verdane, that's what dragged me and Lex into the conflict where I met up with Sir Sigurd..." He had a sudden memory of Lex then, grinning beneath the springtime sun. _You just can't stay out of these things, can you, Azel..._ "And after a couple of years, your mum got involved too. She was acting as an escort for Father Claude of Edda. And that was right about when we all got declared traitors and had to flee to Silesse, and we both fell in love with Silesse and with each other."

Even to his own ears, the tidy ending to the story sounded rushed and unsatisfactory. What had Tinny heard in the gaps between each spoken word? _"Yeah, Lady Aideen was someone I went to war over. But when it came to your mum, I left her sitting undefended in Silesse with the two of you kids."_

But Tinny smiled at him as though she believed in his story, and then she politely pointed out that it was time for dinner and they both ought to dress for it. So he hopped down from Tinny's dainty bed and headed back to his own apartment, cursing himself all the while.

"She had to know something was off. I can't do anything right. I've been wrong in every way since before I was born, so I guess my luck's not going to change now."

The guilt might not have wracked Azel so much as it did had it not been for the treacherous feeling in his heart when he'd first seen Lady Lana, looking so much like Aideen from twenty years before.

-x-

Azel understood perfectly well why he hadn't been looking for Arthur the way he kept trying to catch up with Tinny.

If Tinny was his precious lovely girl, a newborn to cradle and caress, Arthur'd been old enough to be more than a baby to Azel. _Papa's little buddy_, Azel thought, and the words sounded in his head like they'd been spoken in Lex's long-gone voice.

Arthur was a terror from the moment he learned to walk, falling into puddles when he wasn't dashing off toward the stables to pet the horsies. Sometimes Azel would tuck Arthur securely into bed at night only to find the boy burrowed into the space between Azel and Tiltyu in their own bed in the morning. Arthur made up his own language to talk to the dogs. Arthur sat on his lap, pointing to words on the page as Azel read aloud to him. Arthur crushed up dust and berries to make paint and then left tiny handprints all over the walls. Arthur went fishing with Azel in the sparkling stream by their cabin and tried to catch silvery minnows by the fistful. He had a thousand memories of Arthur, the beautiful and the heart-stopping, and more than that, Azel'd had _plans_. He cherished the idea of the spells he'd teach Arthur and the things they'd do together and the moments they'd share when Arthur was a little older, or a lot older, and...

And nothing. Today's Arthur stood before him as a youth fully grown, almost the age Azel had been when he and Lex set off on their mission, and every fond plan Azel had for his son had come to absolutely _nothing_... on Azel's end, anyway. From the sound of things, Arthur had done just fine without him. Crusader. Warrior. Mage Knight. Hero.

Not existing was bad enough, but not _needing_ to exist made Azel half-wish he could climb back into his glass coffin and fall again into the dreamless sleep of oblivion. Instead, he and Arthur had dinner together.

The first thing Azel noticed was that Arthur's table manners were decidedly... rough. Especially compared with Tinny's dainty court gestures. The plate sounded like it chipped every time Arthur hit it with his fork.

The second thing Azel noticed was that his earlier impression of Arthur as being somehow like Arvis wasn't mere illusion. Maybe it was the way Arthur carried himself, the proud head and confident straight shoulders. Maybe it was the long, elegant fingers. Some of it was definitely from Arthur's angular face and the cascade of hair over his shoulders. But there was some glimmer of House Velthomer's legacy in Arthur in spite of his pale Freege coloring, and this realization made Arthur's words all the more... striking.

"So, Father. I take it you'll be governing Velthomer from now on?"

Of all the things he'd dreaded Arthur might say, Azel never anticipated _that_.

"Why would that be?"

"My inheritance passes through you," Arthur replied, and an odd little smile flickered over his face for a moment. "With you here and likely to enjoy many years yet- and Tinny and I do hope that is so- there's no need for _me_ to take Velthomer's throne."

"I don't care," Azel said without even thinking about it. "I never dreamed of ruling Velthomer and I don't want it now."

Stepping into the space left by Arvis was the absolute last thing on earth that Azel wanted to do.

Arthur wasn't pleased by that answer. His pale eyes narrowed just a little, and it seemed to Azel that Arthur's guard went up in some indefinable way.

"Please consider it, Father."

"Okay. I'll consider it."

Azel mostly said it to shut down this line of conversation. Arthur showed that twitch of a smile again and it struck Azel that he didn't like the way Arthur smiled.

He didn't like a lot of things about Arthur.

He didn't like Arthur.

_He didn't like Arthur_. The part of Azel that was, now and forever, the scared little brother of Duke Arvis of Velthomer was silently screaming that this young man across the table was someone Azel shouldn't want to know, should get away from, that there was something bad and wrong about him.

"Are you all right, Father?"

"No," Azel said, and he pushed his chair back from the table. He batted away Arthur's hands, those long pale hands that once left berry-juice handprints on the walls. But though he had every intention of standing up and walking in a blind haze towards any place that wasn't this one, this time Azel gripped the armrests of his chair and took a few deep breaths until the wave of nauseating _disgust_ passed. Then it was Azel's own turn to force a smile.

"I'm sorry, Arthur. I don't think I'm used to being alive quite yet."

"Right," said Arthur, and he nodded as though this made a convincing explanation for his father's odd behavior. Maybe it did. Azel didn't really know what ordinary behavior was supposed to be in the context of where and what he now was.

"Why wind magic?" Azel then asked.

"What?"

So it was indeed possible to rattle Arthur. It wasn't ever possible to rattle Arvis like that, to make him start a little in his chair.

"Tinny said you specialized in wind magic. Any reason for that?"

"I was in Silesse. That's what everyone learned."

"But you had all my tomes of fire spells, didn't you?"

"Yes," Arthur admitted. He sounded just a little sheepish now, and he was looking down at the tabletop rather than at Azel.

"Didn't you feel any affinity for fire?"

"Not really."

"You never wanted to do this?" Azel formed a little sphere of flame in his hand- pure parlor-trick magic, useless in combat- and held it up to Arthur's face, right in front of his nose. "You never wanted to fall into it, to embrace it, to let it consume you?"

"No."

Azel could see the flame reflected in Arthur's eyes, but beneath the glow of the fire he saw an obvious procession of thoughts that all revolved around how deranged Azel might possibly be.

"Good." Azel snapped his hand shut and extinguished the flame. "Fire magic is the most useless branch of magic there is. Once I learned thunder magic I preferred that to everything else."

Arthur blinked and then let out a bark of stifled laughter, the sound of discomfort mingled with relief.

"I never knew that about you," he said. "I don't think anyone mentioned it."

"Well, we have a lot to learn about one another. I guess this is a start." Azel was gripping the armrests of his chair too tightly again, but inside he was pleased that he'd managed to completely wrest control of the conversation away from his unsettling son.

But he still didn't much like Arthur, and a part of him was dying from that realization.

**To Be Continued**

* * *

Author's Note: this is, of course, a nod to how lousy fire magic is in FE4 compared to the rest.


	6. Questioning

**While You Were Sleeping**

I do not own _Fire Emblem_ or any of its characters.

Obligatory Health Advisory: This chapter again includes grown-ups using _substances_ as grown-ups often do.

* * *

_(Questioning)_

After his nerve-wracking dinner with Arthur, Azel didn't wait for an invitation to go to the smoking room.

"No Shanan?" he asked, upon finding Oifaye alone on the tattered settee.

"Shanan had other obligations tonight," Oifaye replied as he offered up the pipe to Azel.

_That blonde girl_, Azel thought as he settled down on a heap of cushions, but what he said aloud was, "Does Lewyn ever come here? I remember him smoking back when we all first met."

"No, Lewyn only associates with the rest of us when there's business involved. I haven't any idea what he does with himself for recreation."

"Good. I didn't want to see him anyway."

Oifaye chuckled at this, then added, "Finn has a drink with us every now and again, but you'll never find him here, either. Not that we've been here very long. It was only a fortnight since the victory on the day that Patty found you."

"Mm." Azel closed his lips around the pipe and proceeded to indulge himself. "This tastes different," he said, upon coming up for air.

"It's a harsher blend than I'd like, but these days one can't be too choosy."

The smoke didn't have quite the same effect as before; it left Azel drowsy but didn't quell his inner agitation. When his inhibitions dropped sufficiently low, he asked the question that'd been floating through his head for the better part of the day.

"Does love go on after we die?"

"What?"

"I've been thinking about my mother, and the stories she told me when I was little about the Crusaders. She didn't tell me the kind of stories I heard at church or in history lessons. She told me things like how when they died, the Crusaders were all rewarded with a grand feast and celebration that'll go on until the end of time. And since I was descended from Crusader Vala, if I was good and strong and brave when I grew up, there might be a place at the table for me."

_And then I'd promise Mum that I'd ask Crusader Vala if she could come too. And I hoped my father wasn't there because he couldn't have been strong and brave after what he did, and that meant I'd never have to see him, ever. _

"I've been wondering where everyone else from Sigurd's army are now, and what they're doing. Maybe they're having a feast that we're missing out on and they've saved a place for us... or maybe they didn't get a place at the table because they... because we..."

"Failed?"

"Yeah." Azel gazed into his misshapen reflection in the glazed surface of the pipe. "Is Sir Sigurd there with Empress Deirdre? I hope they're with one another. But my brother loved Deirdre too, from what Julia said, so does he have a place there at her side? My brother did good in his own way, or tried to. And how do the gods reward or punish someone like Blume, who tried to do the right thing... but didn't try hard enough?"

Azel had a more nuanced view of his late brother-in-law after talking things over with Tinny. Blume hadn't been all bad, even if he hadn't exactly been _good._ He'd loved his two children. He might have even loved Tinny in a watered-down fashion. And he'd been enough of a loving brother enough to bury Tiltyu _on ice_, her body as perfectly preserved in death as Azel's had been in his magical sleep.

"I really can't say, Azel," Oifaye was saying. "I don't think any of us will know until we're there."

"I hope Tiltyu's there. I hope that she's having feasts and celebrations and everything that she liked..." Azel felt a dripping from his nose and blamed the smoke. He wiped his face on his sleeve in a gesture that always got him shouted at when he was younger. "I hope the things she suffered count for something in the eyes of the gods, even if we didn't win."

"I'd imagine that they do-"

"When we were_ in it_, we could keep telling ourselves that everything was worth it because things would get better. Now, I know that it's over, things never got better, and I can't take any of that time back. It's done."

"And you can only find resolution in death itself, like Sigurd and Deirdre." Oifaye sounded like he'd thought long and hard on the matter himself. Maybe too long.

"Except maybe you can't. Maybe we can't." Now he didn't feel peaceful at all, or even the least bit drowsy. Ashes fluttered down from the bowl of the pipe as it sat unused between them. "I mean, if being a dead hero is the best you can be, why'd the gods give us the Valkyrie Staff to call people back?"

He remembered the ceremony where Father Claude revived Sylvia. There hadn't been any hint that this was anything but the best, the greatest, the most gracious thing the priest could do with his gifts when he brought life back to the poor battered body of the little dancing girl. Nobody mourned that Sylvia was getting plucked out of some heroic paradise and nobody suggested that she'd earned a place at the table of the gods by getting herself killed in Sigurd's service. Her death was simply sad and her resurrection joyful.

"Hey, Oifaye, where's the Valkyrie Staff now?"

"I heard that Claude's disciples put in back in the Tower." Oifaye didn't have to say which tower, as they both remembered the austere spire of Saint Bragi rising above its windswept promontory to the north of Agustria.

"But nobody can use it, right?"

"As far as anyone knows, Claude never had children."

The staff was broken anyway, Azel remembered. It snapped in half after its single use, burned clear through by the awesome power of the resurrection spell. But there'd been that slight chance...

And for that slight chance, the faintest of hopes, Tiltyu was resting in a frozen tomb in faraway Alster. It might have been as easy to wake her from death as it had been for Lewyn to bring Azel out of sleep... except that now it wasn't and never would be.

Oifaye rose from the settee.

"I'm sorry to break things off here, Azel, because I truly appreciate being able to have discussions like this with you, but Fee _will_ be cross with me if I don't get back to her soon."

"Fee?" The name of Lewyn's daugher didn't make sense in the context of what Oifaye said, but then Azel noticed the heavy gold ring upon Oifaye's left hand. "You're married?"

That detail must have slipped by him in the last couple of days.

"We try not to flaunt things the way Shanan does."

"Oh. Yeah, that's a lot better for everyone else in the army," said Azel. He remembered entirely too well what it felt like to be on the sidelines when all the ladies started making their choices. "How long has it been?"

"Five months."

"Wow," said Azel as he reclaimed the abandoned pipe. "I bet Lewyn had some things to say about that."

"Not a word, actually," said Oifaye, and his pleased expression turned a little sour and maybe a little wistful. "Not a word..."

Azel stared up at Oifaye, but the Oifaye he was _seeing_ then was Sir Sigurd's young adjutant, the boy whose cheeks colored whenever brave and graceful Dame Fury chanced to speak to him.

"She's Fury's daughter."

"Yes."

"That's pretty weird, Oifaye." It was likely something Azel shouldn't have said, but he was finally calm and a little numb and honestly just didn't care. "I mean, how would all of you feel if I decided to try my hand for Lady Lana? It'd be like getting a second chance at Aideen."

"I think His Highness would be quite upset if you tried to seduce his wife," Oifaye said, and he began to walk away in a swift but regular pace, like a soldier on the march. "Don't make yourself sick, Azel."

And then he disappeared through the beaded curtain that hung across the door. The beads all clacked together in his wake.

He probably shouldn't be causing arguments with the few people who were being friendly to him, Azel thought as he rested his cheek on a cushion adorned with what looked like tiny diamond-shaped mirrors. But if he'd arrived here in 778 to find Oifaye married to his own little Tinny, he'd have been tempted to punch the older man.

No, younger man. The kid with the stack of maps who thought Dame Fury was the prettiest thing in camp. It was definitely weird. Just... weird.

Azel fell asleep.

**To Be Continued**

* * *

A/N: Yes, so here is the obligatory Tiltysicle part of the 'fic. No, there's no Valkyrie Staff user in this timeline 'cause Sylvia married Alec. FE4 gamecanon and notes seems to imply that you do need a body to perform resurrection magic.


	7. Apologizing

**While You Were Sleeping**

I do not own _Fire Emblem_ or any of its characters.

* * *

_(Apologizing)_

"Wake up, milord."

The grip this woman had on Azel's arm wasn't especially gentle. Neither was the tone of voice she used, in spite of the formal address.

"Huh?"

But now that he was awake and sitting up, the servant was going about her business almost as though he, Azel, were part of the tatty furniture.

"Some of you crusaders aren't any better than Prince Julius and his lot," she was saying as she brushed up some ashes from the carpet at his feet. "Ordering things from the kitchen at all hours, breaking the bed slats, running about in the gardens with no clothes on, boys doing things to one another in the baths. _And_ the one who drinks all night in his room! And now there's you trying to burn the place down in your carelessness."

Azel had long ago gotten used to hearing the monologues of servants, who let him hear the things they would've liked to say to Lord Brother and other more illustrious nobles. But something about this particular monologue struck him as terribly familiar...

"Min?"

"Milord?"

"Min, it's me. Azel."

He was sure of it. Though her ruffled dark hair had gone all gray at the front and her face was sunken and sallow, he felt for certain that he recognized her keen dark eyes and her voice. She'd been his mother's best friend among the servants of House Velthomer, and the part of Azel still tied by some chain to Arvis felt relieved that, for whatever reason, Arvis had brought Min to Belhalla and somehow kept her safe.

"Lord Azel's been dead and gone for almost as long as you've been alive, young man," she said now, and Azel could hear as much hurt in her voice as there was annoyance.

He pulled up his sleeve to show a triangular scar on his left wrist, left by a long-ago attempt to play with a lion cub in the menagerie. Arvis wouldn't let it be healed through magic, as he said Azel must need a reminder to pay more heed to the order of things in the world. Min remembered the scar, though- she'd helped his mother to bind that injured wrist.

"Lord Azel, how can this be?

"Magic." It was the only explanation he had, after all.

Azel wasn't sure what he expected from Min now- cosseting and a handful of sweets? A silly little story to keep him amused and quiet? Whatever it was, he didn't get it; her sallow cheeks went pale and she finished her work in a hurry before bowing out.

"I'm sorry, Min," he said, too late. "You might've been better off never knowing that."

-x-

Three days passed, with Belhalla in a state of perpetual celebration for all that the servants were beginning to be cross about the sort of people holy crusaders were when not out crusading. Prince Seliph spent most of his time working behind closed doors with Lewyn, and Oifaye and Shanan got called into these proceedings often enough that nobody had time to dilly-dally in Azel's company. By now, Azel had pretty much resigned himself to his new status as one of "the kids," and he got by. Twice he met Tinny for tea, once with Julia and once with just the two of them, and while the get-togethers were pleasant they didn't recapture the strange intimacy of the chat in Tinny's bedroom.

Besides, of the two girls, Julia seemed more cordial toward him.

"How's it going, Azel?"

Azel saw no reason to sugar-coat his words around Lewyn.

"Tiltyu's been dead for years, there's no way I can get her back, and my kids don't know me and don't seem to like me very much."

"Things like this happen."

"Yeah... I heard about Fury. I'm sorry, Lewyn." He'd heard enough about Lewyn, Fury, and their children to wonder why he was even going to the bard for sympathy. "And I just don't know what to do about Arthur. His entire attitude has just been, 'Oh good, you're not dead, YOU deal with ruling Velthomer.'"

"Look. You want to talk to him, and he's willing to talk to you."

"Yeah."

"Like I told you, these things happened to just about everyone. Finn and his boy Delmud didn't even exchange a word for the better part of a year after they first saw one another. Del's a good kid, but it wasn't until Finn nearly got himself torn to pieces by the Weiss Ritter that they decided they had anything to say." Lewyn shrugged, a gesture that brought back the image of the devil-may-care young bard from Azel's memories. "I don't think it'll take _that_ much for you to deal with Arthur. For one, being left for dead in a glass box is a better excuse for not sending your kid a note on his birthday than being up and around and doing other things the entire time."

"I don't think Arthur cares about that. He knows I wasn't there when the soldiers came for Tiltyu, and I think that's enough. More than enough." Even as he spoke, the root cause of his dissatisfaction with finding himself alive became clear to Azel, and he spilled out this epiphany to Lewyn without even thinking it through. "I wanted to give my kids a better life than what I had, and I actually managed to give them _something worse_."

Arvis might not have been the warmest or most reassuring presence in his life, and sometimes he did things that caused Azel hurt, but overall he'd been an improvement over everything Azel had heard of their father Viktor. Julia had nothing but good things to say about her father, so maybe Arvis had learned from whatever mistakes got made in raising Azel. But Azel couldn't claim credit for anything, really. Tiltyu died horribly and Hilda saw to it that Tinny suffered for years under her "care" at Alster. And as much guilt as Azel felt over what'd happened to Tinny, he at least felt he could _relate_ to her experience of being the charity child in Blume's court. The idea of Arthur's solitary, hardscrabble existence filled Azel with outright horror, as it was beyond anything he could really envision.

"Wanting the best for your children doesn't ennoble you on its own, Azel. Take your late and unlamented brother-in-law- he wanted a better world for his two kids. Well, we're in in that better world, and part of the trade-off is that Ishtore and Ishtar are dead."

Azel stared into Lewyn's icy green eyes. Bard, king, wanderer, holy man- what _was _he, really?

"Don't come around to anyone with your complaints, Azel. No one here wants to hear it. And don't go asking anyone _why, _either- if you ever get a reason, you won't like it. I can promise you that."

It was his childhood all over again, all of it. He was always wrong. His existence was wrong. He made everyone unhappy. And there was never any good answer if he dared to ask why.

-x-

Azel remembered hearing somewhere that the cathedral of Belhalla came first- Saint Heim's expression of gratitude for the gods who gave them a miracle at Darna. The cathedral came first, and then the palace-fortress rose around it.

He didn't go there to seek peace from the gods. Azel had feared the gods, _dreaded_ them really, without ever loving them. Certainly he dreaded Vala, who after all had chosen Arvis and their father Viktor to be her successors on the earth, and Azel never felt any better about stern Saint Heim or valiant Baldur, and even they weren't nearly as frightening as some of the others. He still felt that old pang of unease in his gut when he looked at their statues, their pictures, their images in stained-glass. Crusader Nova, with her tragic dark eyes turned toward the heavens and blood dripping down from the head of her lance, Black Knight Hezul with his demon sword in hand, as terrifying now as when Azel was a child and the _idea_ of Hezul stalking the earth gave him nightmares...

He sat in a pew in the middle of the nave, staring down these ancient windows and all their memories, until the colored shapes cast by the stained-glass stretched out far upon the floor and crept up the opposite wall. It was quiet there, or at least no one bothered him, until just before sundown when the great gilded doors behind him creaked open. A small procession came down the aisle, led by the young priest from Seliph's army; Azel realized it was Prince Leif, his sister Altena, and those closest to them coming in for evening prayers. He might've gone to stand with them and probably should've, but instead of moving to the front of the cathedral by the altar Azel hunched down in the pew where he already sat with his hands clasped in his lap.

Corple the priest couldn't have been more than twelve years old- maybe thirteen- but he had a book of Scripture in one hand an a shepherd's staff in the other, and he sang the service in a clear, solemn voice. Azel knew the evening prayer, sort of; Crusader Bragi penned it back in the darkest days of the last holy war, and the rest of the Twelve spread it far beyond Bragi's own church of Edda. Azel remembered holy days in the ducal chapel of Velthomer, with a hundred tapers burning by the altar and a choir of twelve youths and twelve maidens singing up in the loft. The Thracians did things a bit differently; for one thing they kept standing through the whole service, but besides that Azel counted just three candles and the music wasn't anything he was used to- no choir with beautiful harmonies, just this stark, eerie chant with everyone echoing the words of the priest.

Blessed One, Mighty One, Undying One, have mercy upon us

_have mercy upon us_

Glory to Your name now and ever

_now and ever_

Unto the Ages of Ages...

There was so much repetition in the chant that Azel might have joined in, mouthing the words and making the sign of the cross when the others did, but he stayed where he was, just listening to the strangeness of the sound. He wasn't sure if it was a terrible sound or not, but he thought he recalled it from somewhere, and after a while Azel remembered that he'd gone to church with Quan and Ethlyn one night in Silesse because it seemed like the right thing to do. The next day, they went home to Leonster to round up the reinforcements that never came.

Under the

_under the _

Power of

_power of _

Azel stared into the flame of the largest candle, stained red by the glass of the candle-holder. He remembered that the colors of the candlelight stood for certain things, that red and blue and green and violet all meant something, but he didn't know what they meant any more. Lost in the sound and the flickering light, Azel only realized the prayers were over when Corple put out the candles and put his incense-burner away. Then Corple retreated to the sanctuary to do whatever it was priests did after prayers and everyone else began to file down the aisle- Leif escorting his wife Nanna, and Altena leaning on the arm of her long-bearded general, and Finn coming a few paces behind them. As Finn walked past the pew where Azel was hiding, Azel called out as loudly as he dared. Finn halted at once.

"Yes, Lord Azel?"

"D'you mind if we talk for a moment?" Azel scooted out of the pew so they could talk like equals. It might not work, but he was going to try. "I get the feeling you're angry at me, and I don't know what it was I did, or when, but I'm hoping we can get that behind us. I really don't want to start off this new era with an enemy."

Especially not an enemy whose son-in-law controlled all of Thracia and its massive army. Azel might not have designs on ruling Velthomer, but he had the political sense to recognize that bad blood between Thracia's governing house and Grannvale was something the world didn't need.

"I apologize if I've caused any offense to you, Lord Azel," Finn said, and Azel mentally kicked himself for even imagining he'd get an unguarded answer out of the other man. But since he, as the mighty lord of Velthomer, had started this conversation, Azel decided to keep on digging himself into another pit.

"You haven't offended _me_. I feel that I've somehow upset you, and whether it was last week or twenty years ago, I'd like to clear it up."

"Ah..." Finn always had kept his hands perfectly still while he talked, not making any gestures that might be misinterpreted by a superior; now the stillness and the lack of _feeling_ in his voice made Azel feel that he was conversing with a statue. "I confess that I was disappointed to find you alone in the catacombs. That disappointment may have colored my judgment these last few days."

"Um... what?"

"In Thracia, we encountered followers of Loptyr who would petrify their victims, turning them into stone. We heard rumors that others, including captives of Sir Sigurd's war taken at Belhalla, had likewise been turned and used to adorn the shrine at Yied, this palace, and elsewhere. I had reason to believe Raquesis might be among them, but of course she wasn't. You were the only one we found."

"Oh." Azel wasn't sure what he thought Finn's explanation might be, but he definitely wasn't expecting _that_. "Finn, Raquesis wasn't turned to stone or put to sleep. She's imprisoned in Silvail right now."

The words weren't fully out of Azel's mouth before he realized that maybe he hadn't been meant to share that information. But he couldn't take those words back, and instead watched as Finn absorbed their import. Azel wondered if his own eyes had looked like that when Lewyn had tossed off the callous admission that Tiltyu hadn't survived.

"Did you get that information from Lewyn?"

"Yeah. I guess he hadn't got around to... look, he said she's been there for seven years, so he probably figured a couple more weeks wouldn't make a difference."

On second thought, Azel probably could have found a better way to express himself.

"I see." Whatever sudden, violent emotion had surfaced in Finn now evened out, and Azel thought of ripples smoothing out on the surface of a pond. He'd tossed in a rock, and the rock made its splash, and now everything was calm again. "Is there anything else, Lord Azel?"

"Um, no. That's probably enough of a mess for one night," Azel added to himself once Finn had gone. "I wonder how much trouble I've caused everyone now."

Azel sat back down in the pew. The great glass portraits of the Crusaders had turned to dark and grotesque jumbles, and silent servants busied themselves lighting candles along the wall. Azel leaned back as if the pew were some ordinary bench- or even the settee he'd nearly set fire to in the smoking room- and stared now at the vast ceiling, where generations of craftsmen made an avalanche of stone lace and molded plaster and lacquered wood. Out of everything he'd seen in Belhalla (and Azel hadn't seen anything outside of Belhalla yet), the cathedral alone was beautiful, untainted by darkness. Azel wondered why Loptyr's worshippers hadn't desecrated Heim's cathedral first. Maybe they were saving it for last, for the victory celebration when the corpses of the new crusaders adorned the high altar.

"Uncle?"

He knew the beautiful voice now and didn't imagine her to be Deirdre any longer.

"Hello, Julia."

"Am I disturbing you?"

"No."

Not in the sense that she meant, anyway. Julia, daughter of Arvis, disturbed Azel plenty in much the same way he disturbed everyone else.

"I was going to light some candles for my parents and brother. Would you like to join me?"

He didn't, really, but Azel said yes anyway. He followed her to a little shrine where Julia had placed icons of Saint Heim and Vala along with fresh flowers- scarlet and white and shimmering pale lilac. He didn't really know what to do other than hold a candle and watch Julia pray, and when she was done he placed his candle in the niche alongside Julia's offerings. He'd placed it there a little crooked and the flame smoked and sputtered at him for a moment.

"When I finally remembered my mother, and what happened to her, I began to do this every night," Julia said. "I didn't have anything from Mother except my own blood, but I gathered up the things that brought her to mind, and I prayed for us both. I feel closer to her after doing this, so I do it often."

"That's good." Azel supposed that Julia's prayers would be the most powerful of anyone's, and if hers didn't have some good effect then nobody's would.

"Would you like a candle for Aunt Tiltyu?"

"No," he said, and didn't waver even as Julia's mouth turned down. "I'm sorry Julia, but I can't. If I do that, then Tiltyu actually dies for me."

He'd come to that realization, at least, when staring at dead Crusaders and contemplating eternity. The thought that she was waiting for him in Silesse was still stronger than the thought of her lying dead and frozen in Alster, and right now the thoughts inside his own head mattered more to Azel than an icon of Tordo, a stick of wax, and a scattering of flowers with petals the color of Tiltyu's eyes.

**To Be Continued**

* * *

A/N: The whole situation with religion in Jugdral is kind of weird. _Thracia 776_ makes it clear that the Edda Church (faith of Bragi and Claude) becomes the main church in Thracia after the war, which means _before_ that everyone was doing something else. Also you have Crusaders kinda sorta being worshiped or at least _venerated_ while other gods, like Earth Goddess Ethnia of Thracia, exist also. I assume Ethnia was the dragon (an Earth Dragon?) who bonded with Nova and therefore a "real" god like Forseti, Naga, and Salamander. Who all turn out not to be actual _deities _per FE13 but oh well.

Also, Azel finally puts on his big boy, uh, robes and starts _acting_ next chapter.

PS: I understand the latest FE4 patch, while using the NoA translated names for relevant characters, is using "Tailto" and 'Teeny" for the Freege ladies. If they ever get localized I don't care if they're called Trish and Trixie as long as "Teeny" doesn't end up being an official NoA name.


End file.
